Vegan Chocolate Recipes. Main Ingredients

Bourbon vanilla powder (ground vanilla pods)

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

This product is a great alternative to vanilla pods and is particularly easy to use, since you don’t have to split a pod and scrape out the seeds every time. Vanilla powder is found in small jars and available in supermarkets and organic food shops. Tightly closed, it keeps almost indefinitely. In these recipes, vanilla powder can always be substituted by vanilla pods and vice versa. Convert with this rule: The seeds from a vanilla pod are equivalent to ⅓ of a teaspoon of vanilla powder.

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Cocoa powder

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Vegan Chocolate Recipes For Your Pleasure. In a book focussing on nothing but chocolate, a good cocoa powder is essential. Bear this in mind when buying a particularly high-quality product. On no account should cocoa powder be confused with chocolate powder. The latter contains cocoa and other ingredients, mainly sugar. It’s also important to distinguish between the lightly defatted variety (about 20 g/¾ oz fat for every 100 g/3¾ oz) and the extensively defatted variety (about 10 g/¼ oz fat for every 100 g). The lightly defatted variety has an intense flavour and more rounded mouthfeel, which is why it is used exclusively in my recipes. The labelling doesn’t clearly state which variety it contains, so it’s useful to check the fat content provided on the package.

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Coconut oil

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Coconut oil is one of the few fats or oils that is solid at room temperature. For this reason, and because it withstands high temperatures, it is very popular for use in cooking. The choice is between the cold-pressed or virgin form of the oil, which has a very strong coconut flavour, and refined oil, which has a relatively neutral taste. The latter can be found in most supermarkets. Unless otherwise stated on the package, you can assume it isn’t cold pressed. Virgin coconut oils are available at gourmet and organic food shops. I very rarely use virgin coconut oil because its intense coconut flavour is usually undesirable in dishes, and coconut oil is typically used for its other qualities. Owing to this difference in flavour, virgin coconut oil should on no account be used as a substitute for refined coconut oil, otherwise the dish will most likely be unsuccessful. Unlike cold-pressed coconut oil, coconut oil with the additional labelling of ‘mild’ can be used.

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Flour

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Vegan Chocolate Recipes For Your Pleasure. Choosing the right flour plays an important and decisive role in my recipes. Two particular points need to be taken into consideration: The type of grain and the extraction rate. The importance of the type of grain: The recipes basically use wheat flour or the alternative of spelt flour, as these have the best properties for baking and binding of all different types of flour. The use of other flours with these recipes might result in unpleasant surprises. In the case of gluten intolerance, use special flours that are as close as possible to the properties of wheat or spelt flours. The importance of extraction rate: A distinction is usually made between the extraction rate, or the quantity of the whole grain used, between flours with low extraction rate (light flour) and flours with a high extraction rate (dark flour). Light (white) wheat and spelt flours have excellent baking and binding properties, particularly the latter, so they can easily be used to replace eggs in certain recipes, which is important for vegan cuisine. These are also the flours of choice for the recipes in this book. I get the best results in baking using white wheat flour. This is the equivalent of plain flour, pastry flour or cake flour.

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Neutral vegetable oil

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

These include liquid plant oils with little or no taste and therefore will not influence the flavour of dishes. There are many different commercially available oils that meet this requirement. The following oils have been tried and tested in my kitchen: neutral, refined sunflower oil for low and medium temperatures; high oleic sunflower oil and refined peanut (groundnut) oil for high temperatures.

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Plant-based milk

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Vegan Chocolate Recipes For Your Pleasure. Plant-based alternatives to cow’s milk range from the well-known but – as far as taste is concerned – questionable soya milk and others made from spelt, rice and oats to almond and cashew milk. The choice depends on different factors. When it comes to baking and cooking, soya, almond and cashew milks are suitable. The characteristics of rice, spelt and oat milks mean that they aren’t ideal for cooking or baking, and I don’t recommend them. Soya milk is the easiest to work with, as its protein and fat content is the closest to cow’s milk. Its questionable flavour almost completely evaporates during cooking or baking, making it extremely versatile. Certain recipes require the use of soya milk because their success depends on its protein content, and the other alternatives contain no protein. For example, this applies to the lemon and ‘cream cheese’ slice and the saffron cream pie.

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Vegan dark chocolate

Vegan Chocolate Recipes

Besides cocoa, good vegan dark chocolate is the essential ingredient in a book on chocolate. It is therefore fundamental to ensure the use of a high-quality product. I always recommend Swiss chocolate, not because I’m being patriotic, but because qualitative experience has shown that it’s in fact very difficult to beat. Cheap cooking chocolate should not be used; as with other ingredients, care must be taken with quality. There’s also vegan milk and white chocolate. Since it’s always important that my recipes are designed for everyday use, neither is used in my recipes. These products are sometimes available in organic food shops, but are often only found in gourmet shops and online.